Baldur's Gate 3's writing is not as good as you think

There is a common opinion regarding 2023’s Game of the Year winner, Baldur’s Gate 3, that the storytelling and characters outshine the gameplay. While not necessarily shared by the majority of fans, this opinion still surprises me: I actually enjoy BG3’s gameplay, but I’m not that impressed with the story and writing in Larian Studios’ RPG.

Some context for the angry mob that’s about to draw the torches and pitchforks in the comment section: I am an old-school gamer. My references, in terms of RPGs, are the likes of Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, Planescape: Torment, Mass Effect 3, the Fable series, the first 10 Final Fantasy games, Chrono Trigger, etc. You get the gist. These are games that, while experimenting with player agency and letting their decisions affect the game, still make story a central focus, even if it’s sometimes divided into a handful of branches.

To summarize: Your input as the player matters, but not as much as the folks who created and wrote this game. These games had a story to tell you. Baldur’s Gate 3? Not so much.

Larian’s take on the Dungeons & Dragons world has been praised for the freedom it gives players, which is done at least partly to compensate for the lack of an open world. The developers famously stated that the game has 17,000 endings, but in truth, this number is not representative, as it accounts for every small variation.Based on my experience of the game, that’s not something to boast about.

How much can you dilute a story with variations, branches, and alternatives before the story itself ceases to have meaning or impact? I would argue that Baldur’s Gate 3 gets pretty close to achieving that. Here are some examples.

I have previously written about how deciding to turn into a Mind Flayer towards the end of the game ends up not being a narratively rewarding choice at all. Your heroic sacrifice is mostly overlooked by your party members, and even your romantic interest largely ignores the fact that you’re now a tentacled, brain-sucking monster. Even after the player character decides to take their own life, there is no real interaction worth remembering.

Speaking of romance, this is one of Baldur’s Gate 3’s most touted aspects. The game promises the player will be able to build relationships with almost every party NPC. In my limited experience (I “only” finished the game twice, so I did not witness all the romances), however, these are better defined as “conquests” rather than romances. You have to do/say a series of things to please your potential partner, which includes playing through their personal quests, and once that’s done, they’re “yours.” You can approach them and ask for a kiss, and they will hit you with some pleasing lines occasionally, but that’s it. I didn’t end up learning more about that character through the romance, nor did I witness particularly interesting moments of growth.

Image: Larian Studios

This “pleasing companions” romance system based on approval rating was already established in early BioWare games such as Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 and the Mass Effect series. However, the resulting romances felt way more significant in those games. The most egregious example is Viconia from Baldur’s Gate 2.

The drow elf priestess of Shar also appears in BG3 (where she gets a full character assassination), but she was a romanceable companion in the second game, and boy, was she hard to please. (I remember having a .txt file with all her lines of dialogue and the exact answers you had to give to proceed in the relationship.) Viconia begins by being aggressive, trying to push you away. At that stage, you have to show strength, often giving the opposite answer that you would think: If you’re too nice to her, she will be disgusted. It makes sense, because she grew up in a matriarchal society where strength is revered and males are scorned. Then, you get to witness her slowly opening up and showing more of her vulnerable side, until she reveals the details of her traumatic past.

It’s painfully slow and difficult to navigate, but incredibly rewarding at the end. Here is a 43-minute video that shows the whole romance:

Viconia’s closest parallel in BG3 is Lae’zel, though I don’t think that a romance with the githyanki warrior is equally rewarding. Outside of showing affection for the protagonist, Lae’zel doesn’t really change during the relationship. She finds out that her goddess was lying and manipulating her, sure, but that happens regardless. You can push her to rebel, but you don’t need to be her partner to do so. By comparison, Viconia is already aware of Lolth’s cruelty when you meet her: Your relationship is about helping her navigate and overcome that trauma.

Significantly, the successful conclusion of the Viconia romance in BG2 is that she breaks up with you because she doesn’t want to expose you to the ire of Lolth. You’ve “won,” but you don’t get to keep the toy. Instead, you’ve made a person care so much about you that she will make the most difficult choice to protect you. BG3, on the other hand, suffers from “wish fulfillment” disease. For example, the endings added in later patches of the game show that you can follow Karlach to Avernus. Lae’zel, who also leaves you at the end of the final battle to lead the githyanki rebellion, then shows up at the “epilogue party” to tell you that you’ll be together again once that small issue is wrapped up.

It’s not just about romances, however. There are many paths and characters in the branching story of Baldur’s Gate 3 that feel underdeveloped or underwhelming. For example, Enver Gortash should be one of the main antagonists of the game, but he’s a flat character who fails to inspire dread, compassion, or any other strong feelings. We don’t know enough about him to care.

While exploring the game, you can learn that his parents sold him into slavery to the devil Raphael, but this info is hidden in easy-to-miss objects and dialogue and has no impact on the game whatsoever. It doesn’t make Gortash a more compelling character. Think about Saren from Mass Effect, Irenicus from BG2, or Kefka from Final Fantasy 6. Compared to them, all the villains from BG3 fall flat. (Raphael is charismatic for sure, but not that interesting.)

Maybe if the game didn’t include several thousand endings, these key characters could have been more developed, and the whole story would have felt like more than an excuse to adventure and level up your party. I’m not saying that Baldur’s Gate 3 doesn’t have its cool moments or sparks of brilliant dialogue: Many fans love the game for its story and characters, and they’re not wrong.

I would argue that BG3's stood out because it came out at a time when narrative-heavy CRPGs were not the norm anymre (and they still aren't). However, my dissatisfaction ultimately boils down to the fact that the game’s story is too diluted among its endless branches and options. As Matrix’s Merovingian said (or Noam Chomsky, if you prefer), choice is an illusion. Too much of it will turn even the best story idea into a kaleidoscope: pretty to look at but not truly memorable.

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